


cepheus

by guybuddyfriend



Category: South Park
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Gen, Littering, M/M, Overly Descriptive, bad imagery, im sad and now so is craig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8083024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guybuddyfriend/pseuds/guybuddyfriend
Summary: craig is concerned about the environment





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mei lol](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=mei+lol).



> hot and ready, guy

It’s his wrist that does it. Craig is taking long, careful steps over splayed arms and bent knees, socked feet twisting in plastic-and-feather-down sleeping sack material and hands reaching for barely-illuminated doorframes. The floorboards creak, but that doesn’t mean anything- under Cartman’s weight, everything creaks. Craig is regulating his breath so it is even and silent, but the more he thinks about his breathing the more he has to regulate it. The light from the moon dusts the tops and corners of the desk and its accessories and lengthens the shadows pulling out of the crack in the door. Craig reaches the other side of the room, catches himself almost stepping on Kenny’s hair and grips the side of the door hard. As he takes his next, careful stride out the door, his wrist pops.

Craig freezes, left foot just barely brushing the ground, and he whips his head back to look at the seven breathing bodies tossed like ragdolls around the room. The form on the bed shoots up after a second or so delay, and Craig remembers to breathe out. Stan reaches up to rub sleep from his eyes and Craig turns to block the light from the door with his back. He watches Stan’s eyes glint in the hallway light as Stan scooches toward the foot of the bed, bleary and searching. Craig leans back into the door, brushing it with his shoulder blades as he waits for Stan to trace Craig’s path through the sea of limbs. Stan is faster to reach the door than Craig was, because he’s surer of his footing and less apologetic about stepping on Clyde’s arm. Clyde doesn’t wake up because that sucker is a rock on his best nights, and Stan doesn’t trip because he’s agile and he doesn’t care very much about Clyde’s arm’s health and safety.

When the flat of Stan’s palm presses firmly into the wood of the door frame and Craig’s mouth is full of Stan’s breath, Craig finds his body relaxing, curling forward so his spine is touching the half closed door and his face is close enough to Stan’s that they share the same heat. Craig stares into glinting eyes and breathes in time with Stan, allowing him to curl his arm around Craig’s waist firmly, hand wrapping around his hip and head tilting. Craig leans into the embrace, letting his lips fall closed against Stan’s mouth. Eyes study and mouths quiver but there is no movement aside from deep breathing and light snoring behind Stan and blood pulsing from one fresh body to another, warm and languid with sleep and familiarity.

Stan is silent, with no intention of pulling away, but the way his pupils flick around what little of Craig’s face he can see when he’s touching it gives Craig the impression that Stan is fully awake and taking this in as an experience in its entirety. Stan pulls on the door silently with his free hand and its creaking open mingles with Craig’s gentle intake of breath. Craig is pulled into Stan’s chest to make room for the door to open, and the entirety of his front is pressed against Stan’s body. When the door is finally open wide enough, Craig takes the four obligatory steps backwards and adds one more for good measure. Stan’s arm leaves his hips but his eyes do not and Craig stands in a state of pause, waiting for Stan to pick up where they left off after he closes the door behind them with a just-too-loud click.

Stan takes six steps forward, arms sweeping and sliding and all-encompassing, hands skimming under Craig’s arms and locking into place vertically on his back. Craig is neither warm nor cool, uncomfortably so, and so he lets Stan walk into him and hold him very close, hoping to disturb the strange temperature equilibrium. Stan is meaningful in his grasp and gaze, keeping his head ducked and mouth carefully open, just enough that Craig was one hundred percent sure he could slot his lower lip into that space if he just wasn’t so unnerved. The extra step Stan took has them pressed so close in the yellow-lit, silent and empty hallway that Craig can feel Stan’s hipbones pressing low into his through two pairs of clumsily thrown-on jeans and two thick layers of flesh and rubber and muscle.

Craig feels the hot air of Stan’s words wash over him before he hears the meaning behind them, hushed tones and rumbly sleep-laced voice masking the earnest message beneath. Stan tries again after clearing his throat, a husky “I’d kill for a Slurpee,” and Craig pulls him by the arm down the steps. They’re silent in the ritualistic pulling on of jackets and boots, Craig fumbles with the zipper on Stan’s parka and Stan reaches up to tug Craig’s hat over his thick, dark hair. Craig tumbles out the door when his hand finally catches up with his head and turns the knob. Stan follows him, stumbling in a bleary haze after Craig, laces untied and skittering across the pavement underfoot.

As they reach the end of the front walk, his conscience gets the better of him and Craig turns and presses both palms to Stan’s chest in a fervent sort of urgency. He stoops to press his lips to Stan’s ear and whispers that he better fucking tie his shoelaces or so help him God he’ll string him up by his cock with them. It’s meant as gruffly as it came out, but Stan smirks up into him and asks him if that’s a threat or a promise. Craig shoves him hard and Stan falls onto his ass, pulling his knees up to his chest and tugging his shoelaces together. Craig hovers uncertainly for a moment, and when Stan gets to his feet they are much closer than Craig thought they’d be.

The boys find themselves with too-empty hands and too-close chests; they hang silently in a limbo of potential breathing one another’s air until Stan takes Craig by the shoulders and whirls him around, a perfect 180, and then they are off, sprinting and whooping and leaping, bounding down sidewalks and flying over fences. Craig gets his jacket caught on the chainlink looping the parking lot of the Sev and in a spontaneous moment of feverous, teenaged passion he whirls around and yanks hard on the down-filled lining of his coat. Stan is a hundred thousand miles away at the other end of the parking lot but skids to a stop before hopping the cement barrier, clinging to it as Craig rips through his parka and blasts away from the fence, absolutely filled with the bright determination that comes with getting such an act of rebellion right on the first try, no hitches.

If Craig’d remembered to use his arms he would have tackled Stan in his sprint to the light stretching from around the corner over the concrete barrier, but he didn’t, so he ended up just sort of slamming into Stan and Stan took them both dramatically over the hard edges. They tumbled to the sidewalk that stretched long and far along the front of the convenience store and lay for a second, but only a second, in something a little less than a heap of hard breathing and throbbing limbs. Craig is the first up, Stan hauling ass after him as he dashes the home stretch to the sliding doors.

Stan stands next to him and Craig is absolutely positive that in another life Stan would have slipped his hand into Craig’s, but this is the wrong world so Craig stands at Stan’s side and they stalk through the doors together, their heavy breathing completely inappropriate for the soft generic muzak playing and the ding of the door’s alarm system a harsh chastise to their beating hearts. Craig regulates his breathing and Stan runs his hands through his hair.

Craig is aching for those fingers to be carding through his own dark, sweaty fringe but this is not the right time or place, and with an ache in his chest he decidedly ignores he acknowledges that it will never be the right time or place. Craig stalks meaningfully into the first four-foot aisle and Stan follows doggedly, still a little out of breath and hazy-eyed. He’s looking around, head swivelling lazily but eyes sharp. Craig notes it and keeps an eye out for the shitty brand of BBQ chips Stan likes, honestly hoping to find them before Stan so he has something to say, some reason to get closer.

As Craig ducks his head and makes an earnest effort of deciding what to select from the store’s assortment of Asian treats or what the fuck ever they called this two-by-four foot slot of the aisle, he feels more than sees Stan stride behind him. He steps forward, trying to give Stan more room to get past him, but when he turns his head to the right in an attempt to catch a shot of Stan’s strong back while he perused the glass bottles in the wall-to-wall freezer, he’s met with empty air. Thick arms cross and lay across the back of his shoulders, followed by the heavy weight of what can only be Stan’s fat fucking head, resting on Craig’s back. Craig gives his shoulders a shake, but Stan doesn’t let up.

“Dude, what?” Stan groans behind him and steps forward, pressing his chest and stomach into Craig’s back, letting his arms unfold and his elbows rest on Craig’s shoulders as his hands actually _do_ curl into Craig’s hair, lifting his hat and working the disgusting hat-sweat into his scalp. Craig grips the shelves in front of him with hands Stan can’t see and steels himself, trying to keep his back and shoulders relaxed so Stan wouldn’t feel the shift.

“What, dude? Come on, get out of there,” Craig repeats, his own hands lifting to swat at Stan’s hands, and he drags the palms of his now _fucking disgustingly wet_ hands down over Craig’s shoulders, under his arms, over his chest, settling on his soft stomach. Craig is absolutely frozen, like watching a deer sniff around close to him- he wanted to invite more of this miracle of nature but didn’t even want to breathe for fear of disturbing the variables that led to this happenstance. Craig feels himself clench involuntarily when Stan presses his mouth to the crook of Craig’s neck, and neither of them move for a moment, each allowing the other to process this momentous step in their already precariously undefined relationship.

Craig does his best to squelch the unrest writhing in his belly again and slowly and smoothly lets his head fall ever so gently to the left, leaving space for Stan to nuzzle into him. Stan pulls away after a moment, and Craig almost misses the soft tickling breath at his nape, the heat at his back, but he won’t ever ever ever allow those thoughts to form into words proper in his mind. Craig keeps his eyes fixed on the segment of treats in front of him and even convinces himself he’s not trying to _fucking die_ by pulling a package of something and staring through the ingredients. He hears Stan clinking around in the glass bottles and Craig is filled with something so cool it’s almost warm and finally Craig allows a thought to filter in through his hard-lined defenses against his own late-night thoughts. Inside this convenience store, with the harsh white industrial LEDs and flickering neon outside and in the window and the white painted bars across the glass and the total and utter isolation of a bored cashier reading the funnies and the slow hum of the heater running under the rolling hotdogs at the front, perhaps this could be the right time and place.

His hat is on the floor behind him, _fuck you too, Stan,_ and Craig swoops down to slip it into his pocket. As he raises his head he finds himself face to thigh with Stan, and he stands without looking away from the body in front of him. Craig stuffs his hat deeper into his coat pocket and then lets his arms fall, left hand barely holding on to the package of what the fuck ever he’s got. Stan’s holding two cans of hard iced tea, and shakes the gently with raised eyebrows. Craig finds himself wondering whether, if they had anything between them, this would be the right time to wrap his arms around Stan’s waist, but because it doesn’t matter anyway, he shrugs and does not smile, turning on his heel and stalking forwards to the cashier.

Craig feels the flickering light in his heart and lets that be his excuse for the chalky feeling in the back of his throat. He stands still with his hands locking behind his back, perusing the various, ugly meats warming in the metal bins. He thinks about a million and five things that all boil down to the same one; to the thought of Stan fumbling with his wallet to his right, trying to make small talk with the cashier, who clearly doesn’t give two fucks.

Neither does he, Craig decides suddenly. Craig doesn’t give a fuck either. He’s just here, at three in the morning, standing with Stan, trying to buy whatever the fuck and probably a hotdog. That’s it. And Craig doesn’t care at all because Stan doesn’t care and the cashier doesn’t care and the flickering lights don’t care and the packages lining the shelves don’t care and the Slurpee machines buzzing in the back don’t care. No one gives two fucks. Especially not Craig. With sudden, new determination, when the cashier asks if he’d like something from behind the glass Craig finds himself pointing at the corndogs laying piled and probably old in the far right bin.

Stan is incredulous, “Are you serious?” Craig gives him the finger and pulls out his own wallet. He hands the notes to the cashier who is carefully balancing two of the battered shits in a stiff paper cone and eyes them with apprehension.

“Just the one,” he says, and the monotony in his voice doesn’t surprise anyone. The cashier responds that it’s a sale, two for four dollars and that one for two thirty nine is a rip off. Craig doesn’t fucking care and takes his corndogs and whatever the fuck cost him two dollars from earlier. He shoves one in his mouth and wraps the second one in its flimsy thin cardboard thing and stuffs it in his back pocket. He follows Stan to the far left and leans against the hard silver countertop as Stan tugs an extra-large cup from the hole in the plastic bin. He takes a step back as he peruses the two jittering machines, eyeing each tap label carefully.

Craig watches the wheels turn in his head and takes another bite of his shitty corndog. He’s constructing a masterpiece of artificial flavours in his head while he unwraps a straw and Craig can appreciate the art of selecting which factory-produced chemicals taste best together. He waits while Stan moves for the root beer one first, and Craig closes his eyes and sends up a prayer to the god of slushy carbonated frozen beverages. What a mistake, everyone knows if you need a soda base you go with Pepsi or Coke. Stan seems to realize his desperate mistake a second in and switches to Coke. Stan clearly has to think this through now, and sips the Coke at the bottom thoughtfully.

His eyes hit Craig’s and he offers his straw, but Craig shakes his head and tells him that he’s more of a Pepsi man- blue is his favourite colour and he’s not a _shithead_ , _Stan, he has taste buds._ Stan raises his eyebrows and his hands in judgemental deference and turns back to the flavours. He spills cream soda, blue raspberry and more Coke into the cup and Craig thinks about vomiting into Stan’s mouth to show him his disapproval but decides it would be a waste of the digesting half of the corndog he just bought. Stan keeps going and tosses in the new watermelon flavour and then some lime and Craig really does feel ill, and Stan tops it off with the fucking coffee flavour and Craig almost decks him there and then.

Stan takes a long pull of the Coke/root beer shit at the bottom and then layers on one last tap of Pepsi. He snatches a lid out of the plastic bin and snaps it on half-assedly. Craig doesn’t move when Stan turns to him, eyes wide, lips wrapped around the straw and lid barely even clinging to the cup. Craig is looking him up and down as though to ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing and Stan just scowls and gives him the finger. Craig lays the third of his corndog that’s left on a couple of napkins on the counter and eases the cup out of Stan’s hands. He twists and snaps the lid on properly and hands it back to him, scooping up one of the iced teas in the hand that’s held the packet of what-the-fuck-evers and snatching the corndog up in the other.

They walk out together and if this was the right thread in the theoretical harp of string theory universes Craig might have wrapped his arm around Stan’s shoulders and kissed the side of his head but this is the wrong chord and Craig doesn’t move his arm. Stan leads them to the other side of the parking lot, over the little grass boulevard and to sit on the curb of the four lane highway. Craig crashes into the grass and lets his legs sprawl into the bus lane, and Stan crosses his legs and balances on the painted yellow concrete. Craig breathes in the night air, the smell of gasoline and dust, and peels off his jacket.

Stan is struggling to open the cans of iced tea and his zipper at the same time, and in a moment of terrible decision making, Craig opts for Stan’s coat instead of his iced tea. Stan lets him unzip him and start pushing the hem of his coat towards his shoulders as he tickles at the tab of the can. Stan finally pops the tab and shakes his arm out of the left sleeve, balancing the can in his right. Craig tugs it out of his hand, last bites of his first corndog clenched between his teeth. Stan finally rips his coat off and throws it behind them, onto the parking lot tarmac.

Stan goes to take  the iced tea, and Craig offers it forward, but Stan grips over Craig’s fingers and tugs him closer to Stan, unbalanced by the stick and meat in his mouth and packages in his other hand. Stan’s right hand wraps around Craig’s hip and his left tugs Craig’s arm over his shoulder. Stan hovers close to his face, and Craig can’t move, breath on his mouth stilling him. Stan nips at the corn dog in his mouth, tearing off some of the batter and smirking. Craig shoots back, hands still full of shit they bought, onto his back, and kicks at Stan. Stan laughs and grabs his boot, throwing it roadside and pulling the stick from Craig’s mouth.

Stan cleans the stick of the last bite of corndog, and Craig is _outraged_. He tries to smack Stan, but remembers the iced tea in his hand and takes a long gulp, instead. Stan stares at him, eyes narrowing and face heating. Craig squints back at him, letting the burning liquid ice through his throat. He hates it, but it’s worth it to see the look on Stan’s face. Craig tears the emptied can triumphantly away from his lips but his cheer is interrupted. Stan tackles him and they wrestle, package and cone and cans and cup forgotten. They roll into the deserted street, Craig is fuzzy and Stan is delirious but they throw hard punches and shove whole-heartedly.

Stan is a whirlwind of hot emotion, hands on fire against Craig’s freezing cheeks and chest pumping boiling blood under heated skin, Craig is melting under Stan and there is nothing either of them will do about it. The punches slow to fists pressing against cheeks, hands opening and palms to chests, hard breathing mingling in the cool night air and Craig is lost in the mist of the breathy clouds. When Stan’s lips brushes his initially, Craig feels the uncertainty, the lack of knowledge and fear of it behind the action.

Craig surges upward, through the fog of thermal equilibrium, and presses his mouth to Stan’s unapologetically, undismissably, and Stan responds feverously. Stan’s tongue swipes over Craig’s mouth hard and fast, and Craig opens to him, letting him lick his teeth and tongue and Craig is just giving himself over, letting Stan take what he needs and not give him anything in return, and for Craig, under the layer of apathy, under the layer of staggeringly prominent sadness and self-destruction, this is enough for him.

Craig lets Stan take from him, has been letting him take from him, will continue to let him take from him, and he will conceal his sick pleasure at the depletion of his own emotional stability to feed Stan’s until the day he dies. If this exercise in exploiting Craig’s humanity gives Stan anything, Craig will offer it up a thousand times. So Craig lets Stan kiss him, lets his flame-coated tongue light the tar behind his teeth and leave his mouth burning, lips freezing and body aching when Stan stands and brushes himself off.

Craig is a glass being filled with cold water, his veins run like ice and he feels it welling behind his eyes, flash-freezing his brain and sparking at his tongue. Craig hauls up after a moment of laying in the yellow lamp-lit street and follows Stan back to the little setup of wrappers and coats. Stan has cracked open the second can of iced tea and has his head thrown back, emptying it down his throat. Craig sits beside him, refusing to allow a sigh to escape his throat, knowing it will shatter the delicate bridge between them of monotonous heartlessness. Stan tosses the can beside him somewhere and takes the second corndog from Craig’s outstretched hand.

Craig cringes at the crinkling of the two dollar package of what the fuck ever- it ends up being some weird seaweed shit- and finally gives up on making the package resealable, shredding the serrated sides with long, shaking brown fingers. Craig pulls out a sheet of the weird dark green shit and takes a careful, very dental bite. Stan stares out into the street. Craig decides he fucking hates it, and slides the half sheet back into the little tray. Stan finishes the corndog, mouth tearing pieces of the batter away from the hotdog and chewing for an inordinate amount of time before swallowing.

Craig casts his eyes out and wishes he could look up; he misses looking at the stars, but doesn’t want to make any sudden movements. They are back on deer terms, he decides; he will not move and frighten the deer, though he knows it has to leap back into the forest at some point. Stan shakes his head when Craig offers him the tray of seaweed and they both ignore the tearing in Craig’s chest, the ugly sound of his heart solidifying into something too heavy for the tubes to hold up and ripping them to shreds as it sinks through his guts to sit at the apex of his ass must have echoed for miles.

Stan keeps his eyes fixed on the horizon and Craig knows he and Kyle have been fighting. They only speak when Kyle is not trying to climb into Stan’s asshole, when Stan is not undressing Kyle with his eyes, when they are not so stupidly in love it transcends the meaning of the word. And because this is the parallel universe that punishes Craig instead of Kyle, instead of Stan or Eric or Token or Timmy or Butters, because this is the world where Craig has to live through this and doesn’t just fall down and die, Stan’s phone fucking vibrates in his pocket.

Stan pulls it out, doesn’t even glance to his right at Craig, and falls into the screen. He laughs, and it’s wet, it’s a genuine bubble of joy that he couldn’t even strangle because he has no fucking decency, and he stands. Craig’s eyes flutter shut and squeeze.

Stan kicks one of the cans and says with barely controlled excitement, “It’s Kyle, dude. I gotta run.” Craig doesn’t respond, because he knows it would hurt more to hear his words echo against the empty road beside the sound of Stan’s sneakers pitching on the concrete, just general three am street sounds instead of words with meaning.

Craig counts his breaths, listens to Stan fade into the distance, and breathes. His eyes open and he pulls his knees to his chest. Craig is the same glass filled with cold water, but someone is trying to refill it, to make the water colder, and the water is spilling out of the glass, out of Craig. He rests his head on his arms, bridging the gap between his knees and his shoulders, and lets the tears slide. He is okay, though. Craig is okay. It’s nothing and it’s everything and because it’s everything and nothing he feels everything and nothing.

Craig lets it move through him, feels his stomach twist and his tongue turn to lead and he tries to remove himself from the physical implications of heartbreak, because really his heart has been broken for years. It is only now that he has allowed himself to believe that there could have been a _perhaps_ , in the flickering fluorescent light of the convenience store at two thirty in the morning, and because his psyche was finally allowed to wander it came crashing head first into the hard reality of it all; Craig is nothing, Craig has always been nothing and Craig will always be nothing.

Now he shakes his mind out, clearing cobwebs and dust that layered while he started thinking with his heart and feels his soul fall back into his body, a hot rock splashing into the cup of freezing water. It cracks the glass, he feels like his skin is tearing and his bones are breaking, but he knows this feeling, and at least it is a familiar kind of hurt, the kind of hurt he can monitor.

Craig removes himself from his mind and snatches his (torn, it’s fucking _torn_ ) coat from the grass. He tugs sad, tingling comfort from the action of wrapping it around himself, of taking care of himself, because no one else will ever do it. Craig lets his eyes water, but his body is trying to hold itself, to relieve itself of this impenetrable sadness, and the tears do not spill. He breathes deeply, allowing himself moments of silence, of mourning, and he takes them like treats, little wads of wet, pathetic self-care he tosses to himself through the bars of his own emotional imprisonment.

Craig stoops to pick up the sticks, the napkins, and the cans, he plucks the torn, crumpled seaweed wrapper from the grass too, and tucks the cans under his arm while he walks to the trash can beside the ever-lit 7-11 sign, tugging on the corners and straightening out the seaweed wrapper. Craig shoves the cans through the flap and holds the wrapper in his hands for a moment. Decisively, he turns and stalks back to the spot on the boulevard, swipes up the tray of seaweed and tucks it as best as he can into the wrapper. He folds the ends, cursing himself for not being more careful when opening it, and tucks it folds-first into his pocket, hoping his jacket lining will keep it closed.

He picks up the still mostly-full Styrofoam Slurpee and glances around, snatching up one more balled-up napkin and deeming the area otherwise clean. He makes his way back to the bin. He tosses the napkin through the flap held open by the contents and holds the freezing cup in his hand for a moment. He takes one long pull of the straw, and lets the pure sugar coat the inside of his mouth.

It tastes like _shit_ and he didn’t know what else he expected. He derives no joy even from the knowledge that this is the same straw Stan used. He opens the lid, the lid that _he_ closed, and sucks saliva from under his tongue and cheeks, hoping to clean out his mouth as he spits into the cup. He shoves it straw-first into the bin and feels nothing.

Craig walks back to the sidewalk and begins the three minute trek to the bus stop he knows is around the corner of the block. He makes it to the edge, and stares up for a moment. The stars are out, and he can barely make out the constellation Cassiopeia behind the blinding street lights. His heart trembles in his chest. The stars are always out for him.

Craig has decided he will not return to Stan’s house. He will take the last bus of the night and go home. He will call Clyde tomorrow and ask him to bring his shit back. He breathes in deeply and hears the bus rumble along the silent streets. He glances back to the spot he had his soul torn from his body, and a dark misshapen form catches his eye. He knows it is Stan’s coat. Of course he would have run off without it.

Craig sprints back and snatches it up. He holds it in his hands for a moment, trembling fingers turning the material over. He hangs it delicately on the barren tree beside him. Stan will find it when he comes out for it later.

Craig stalks back to the bus stop, each step tearing another layer of his heart off. Stan will be cold when he comes back to find his coat. The bus is getting close, growling engine bouncing around the blackened offices building windows and stone foundations around him, and Craig regrets leaving the jacket. What if someone takes the coat? Stan will have to buy a new one, and it will be Craig’s fault.

When the headlights finally turn the corner, they illuminate only Craig’s retreating back. He has turned and sprinted back. This is the last time he will run back and forth for Stan, this is the last time he will do any of this for Stan. He is promising this to himself, to Stan, to the faded and barely shining constellation Cassiopeia. He is lying.

He holds the coat in his hands, knuckles white and arms shaking. He holds the hem of the red collar to his nose, his eyes squeeze shut. He is apologizing to himself, to Stan, to the faded and barely shining constellation Cassiopeia.

Craig does not catch the last bus.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks friend


End file.
